Black forest trip - Funny experience with GPS
We are so used to gadgets that we lose direction where common sense could have prevailed better.
One such incident happened with me when on a car trip and using the GPS navigator.
This took place while I was in Belgium.It was the month of April and the winter was just getting over. Some of my colleagues at workplace had planned a trip to Black Forest , Germany. It was going to be a car trip and i voted myself in.
The trip began on saturday morning. The weather was not good. It was drizzling and sometimes getting heavier intermittently. We had rented two cars , a mercedes A class and a Skoda Yeti. There were eight of us travelling in these two cars.
This being my first car trip, I was pretty excited. We started at 7:30 AM. The GPS directions had been mapped for our hotel location. It was the first time I was following directions on the gadget and it was working out quite fine. My friends were driving the car and I was navigating it in turns.
We had a stop-over at Luxembourg before we headed to France. The Tom-Tom (as it is called by the name of the company) was showing perfect directions with regards to speed limit , lane preference and expected time of arrival. Traveling on the auto-bahn was a fantastic experience. The vehicles were whizzing past us at speeds of about 250 Km/hr. Since it was a first time for my friends as well, we did not exceed the speed limit of 180 Km/hr.
After 7 hours we reached our hotel in Titisee-Neustaad.We had a great time in Triberg , Freiberg and Feldberg. On our last day before we were just about to return we went to visit the famous cuckoo clock in Triberg. We left this place at 2 PM and were headed towards the Titisee lake.
Now came the time when the GPS really had us misled. We were following the directions closely , when suddenly it pointed us to take a right turn. In the ideal case , the turn was supposed to be done at the next signal , however it was following its own shortest path algorithm. Since we were so used to following every direction of the GPS , we did as it was directed. The road was not a gravel path and all we could see around was farmhouses and dense woods.
We still followed the road under the pretext that we were on the right path. The gravel path now turned to a muddy one and the area looked absolutely deserted. We were following a very narrow muddy path and our suspicions grew strong that we were lost. But we still kept following the direction. We came close to a deserted barn and then the muddy path took an incline and was leading to the top of a hill. My friend drove the car uphill until it came to a point beyond which it refused to go up.
The car was put at full throttle but still it was not moving a bit. We got out of the car and started looking for any signs of a highway.
On top of the hill, there was a highway :) , so the GPS was indeed right in calculating the path , however the road was not usable. One would need a really high power SUV to climb that hill.
Finally we decided to go back and consider an alternate route. It took us 15 minutes to bring the car down in reverse. The mud was slippery and the brakes had to be released in an orderly manner to stop skidding on the inclined plane.
My friend behind the wheel was sweating profusely. One wrong direction and the car could have had a crash landing in the valley. After the car was safely brought down, we were also so tensed that we dropped the plan of visiting the Titisee lake. The person who was driving had to smoke a cigarette in order to get hold of himself.
Finally, we started off again. The GPS was still pointing to all sorts of weird narrow lanes. Only when we reached an intermediate highway did our fear of having lost went away. It was all a happy drive then.
One such incident happened with me when on a car trip and using the GPS navigator.
This took place while I was in Belgium.It was the month of April and the winter was just getting over. Some of my colleagues at workplace had planned a trip to Black Forest , Germany. It was going to be a car trip and i voted myself in.
The trip began on saturday morning. The weather was not good. It was drizzling and sometimes getting heavier intermittently. We had rented two cars , a mercedes A class and a Skoda Yeti. There were eight of us travelling in these two cars.
This being my first car trip, I was pretty excited. We started at 7:30 AM. The GPS directions had been mapped for our hotel location. It was the first time I was following directions on the gadget and it was working out quite fine. My friends were driving the car and I was navigating it in turns.
We had a stop-over at Luxembourg before we headed to France. The Tom-Tom (as it is called by the name of the company) was showing perfect directions with regards to speed limit , lane preference and expected time of arrival. Traveling on the auto-bahn was a fantastic experience. The vehicles were whizzing past us at speeds of about 250 Km/hr. Since it was a first time for my friends as well, we did not exceed the speed limit of 180 Km/hr.
After 7 hours we reached our hotel in Titisee-Neustaad.We had a great time in Triberg , Freiberg and Feldberg. On our last day before we were just about to return we went to visit the famous cuckoo clock in Triberg. We left this place at 2 PM and were headed towards the Titisee lake.
Now came the time when the GPS really had us misled. We were following the directions closely , when suddenly it pointed us to take a right turn. In the ideal case , the turn was supposed to be done at the next signal , however it was following its own shortest path algorithm. Since we were so used to following every direction of the GPS , we did as it was directed. The road was not a gravel path and all we could see around was farmhouses and dense woods.
We still followed the road under the pretext that we were on the right path. The gravel path now turned to a muddy one and the area looked absolutely deserted. We were following a very narrow muddy path and our suspicions grew strong that we were lost. But we still kept following the direction. We came close to a deserted barn and then the muddy path took an incline and was leading to the top of a hill. My friend drove the car uphill until it came to a point beyond which it refused to go up.
The car was put at full throttle but still it was not moving a bit. We got out of the car and started looking for any signs of a highway.
On top of the hill, there was a highway :) , so the GPS was indeed right in calculating the path , however the road was not usable. One would need a really high power SUV to climb that hill.
Finally we decided to go back and consider an alternate route. It took us 15 minutes to bring the car down in reverse. The mud was slippery and the brakes had to be released in an orderly manner to stop skidding on the inclined plane.
My friend behind the wheel was sweating profusely. One wrong direction and the car could have had a crash landing in the valley. After the car was safely brought down, we were also so tensed that we dropped the plan of visiting the Titisee lake. The person who was driving had to smoke a cigarette in order to get hold of himself.
Finally, we started off again. The GPS was still pointing to all sorts of weird narrow lanes. Only when we reached an intermediate highway did our fear of having lost went away. It was all a happy drive then.
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